A veteran's view on marketing games

The Daily Mail is truly abysmal

They’re at it yet again. A story designed to strike fear into the heart of middle England that owes nothing to the truth. The old adage of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story applies in spades here. They really are just trying to sell newspapers with sensationalism because nobody with a brain can be stupid enough to believe what they have written.

If a Wii is family friendly then presumably a DVD player is. And you can play totally execrably disgusting content on a DVD player. Like Waz for instance.

Game content is mild compared to film and book content. MadWorld just pales into insignificance compared to what is on these other media.

Games are age rated with the excellent PEGI system. Every parent can clearly see this on the front of the packaging. Books are not age rated and any child can buy the most horrifically violent and graphically sexual book with no hindrance. Why doesn’t the Mail campaign against books?

There is plenty of equally violent content already available for the Wii. The Mail are just exposing their total ignorance with this.

This is a Sega game so isn’t going to reach that many people, even after this free publicity from the Mail.

The Daily Mail’s continuing obsession with the imagined dangers of video gaming must have a root cause. My theory is that one of the editors’ parents wouldn’t let him have a Sinclair Spectrum as a child and that the resultant trauma has made him a compulsive/obsessive anti gamer ever since. No other explanation makes any sense.

11 Comments

We have the same problem in the U.S. I think the “violent video game is ruining my child” meme is a media construction that is meant to distract people. It also gives comfort to parents who haven’t been able to set proper boundaries for their children when buying video games. And so the story goes, “Those evil game publishers!” When in reality violent crime in the U.S. is down. Violent crime in schools is also declining. No one has been able to prove that video games lead kids to be more violent. And it’s almost a non-issue because we have a great rating system.

If parents are concerned they just need to do their jobs and parent. It’s that simple.

I think I speak for all the members on the forum I linked to/help run when I say you’ve hit the nail on the head. Also when we tried to comment with criticism of their article, none of the articles were published, especially here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=563109&in_page_id=1879
Y’know, if the Daily Mail became a gaming newspaper, half the lies it publishes would be stopped, but then again on the other side, it would probably turn out to be ‘first party hugger’ like ONM.

I’m not too aware about the potential rivalry between newspaper agencies, but wouldn’t it be possible to contact one and try to get that article through, with a title like “Daily Mail’s Dark Age ignorance about video games clearly shows” (example).
Someone like, say, a veteran, could eventually pick up a phone and try to tease the competition.

I mean, seriously, why couldn’t properly informed articles find a place in one truly serious “casual” paper?
There must surely be a spot somewhere to reach a wide audience. It does not need to be huge, just serious and punchy enough to get some spotlight.
You never see people standing on the box to cut the media bullshit, and the best you get is how Obama played goddamn Pong.
Hello?

This is all sadly familiar. I grew up in the 1980s, when the Daily Fail was at the forefront of the “video nasties” controversy. In the long term, that achieved nothing – the 70ish movies that were banned because of that controversy simply became top sellers on the pirate market. They’re nearly all available on DVD now, and often look pretty tame compared to the movies that are coming out today.

…and so it goes here. The Fail (I have to call them that, it’s so apt) will continue to bang on about this issue until some token changes are made to the ratings system. Then, they’ll forget about it and move onto some other scare story. I just hope they don’t manage to get anyone calling for a “ban” on this game to be taken seriously. I (as a 33 year old with no kids in the house) want to play it!

By the way, it’s worth noting that the organisation that’s calling for a ban is the same organisation that Mary Whitehouse founded. Look her up online if you want to see what dumb, crazy old women with too much time on their hands can do to destroy culture if they get enough people to complain with them.

“Waz”, Bruce? That’s clearly a Δ, with the title being WΔZ. I haven’t seen the film, so can’t comment on whether the content of it is exploitative or justified by a good story and a strong message.

Regardless, I agree with you that the Daily Mail is a sensationalist piece of shit, as I’m sure almost every gamer does. They’re stuck with the age-old idea that games are For The Kids, so any mature ideas in them should be illegal, lest they corrupt the innocent minds of Britain’s Youth.

Excellent article, absolutely spot on. The Mail is just the biggest waste of good paper there is and I can’t find a reason to justify it as a newspaper because from what I’m aware of it never actually prints much news.